I’m at a Payphone trying to Blog Home….

The day the Earth stood still was two weeks ago when my son’s Smart phone decided on it’s own to dummy down and quit.

I learned this had happened through his sister who Stumbled upon his Facebook message to a friend commenting that: “His Phone Died”.

I am grateful that my sons lines of communication are open to his thousands of Facebook friends and refuses to add his mother as a bosom buddy.  He does not want  (me) to be privy to his status while away at college.  He thinks his mother will spend her days stalking, (or creeping as they say), on his infamous site, where the Full Monty of Freshman life is displayed and revered.  Like I have time for that. OK, I sneak a peak every so  often when Facebook isn’t looking.  I have eyes in the back of my FACEbook.

It’s amazing how this generation ( xyz?) seem to run amok when an electronic is on the fritz. It’s as if one of their brain waves collide  with an HD air-wave and severed the wireless connection that adheres the Smart phone to their palm, resulting in their  opposable  texting thumbs to short circuit.  Ive seen those thumbs work that virtual keyboard like greased lightening,  while sucking down Kentucky fried wings. Those thumbs slip- slidin’ on the screen not missing a beat of LOL or TTYL or POS. ( Parent Over Shoulder).

My son programmed his smartie phone  messages to modulate the night- watchman in a  Navy ship yard.  It sounds off with two bells every time a text is received.  In the olden days of sailing , watches were timed by a thirty minute hour glass and bells would be struck every time the glass was turned.  My son watches the glass of his phone every second, all day and all  night, no matter which way its facing.

I hear his phone clanging in a Bell  pattern of pairs :

Morning Watch: ding-ding

Forenoon Watch: ding-ding-ding

Afternoon Watch: ding-ding-ding-ding

Night Watch: ding-ding-ding-ding-ding

WEE -Hours- While- Family Members- Sleep-Watch:  DING – DAMNITY- DING. 

I  lie and wonder  for whom the Bells Toll every second as my sons phone shouts out a “new message received”.  What news is so urgent to be shared every minute of the day and night amongst his mates.  And now, here he sits with his dead phone, and I wonder ; what could possibly be going on in his head now that his entire fleet of friends are unable to reach him and text their one syllable messages. 

I have witnessed he and his crew hanging out and barely speaking in full sentences to each other. I  have watched as this collegiate Armada sit around in silence dancing their opposable thumbs across their phones as a multitude of ships bells chimed in unison…sounding alarms….signaling functional and ceremonial uses of considerable significance as to whether one  of them scored a date for the night.

I think about when I was his age and the readiness of communication while out and about, was finding a working payphone.  In my day, there wasn’t a lot of emphasis on  repetitive contact with one another.  If you had something to say, or relative info to convey, you dialed a number,got to the point, and made your arrangements.

There was no need to go back and forth with responses, you knew what to do and when and where to do it. There was no need to hold twenty people on the line to confirm what dress you were wearing to the dance. There was no need to speak every minute to someone via the phone as we were all speaking in PERSON when we got together.  If everyone related all their conversations ahead of time we would have nothing to talk about when we congregated.  Well, well, well..maybe that explains why my son and his friends are silent when they assemble. They are TEXTED-OUT, OVER-MESSAGED, PINGED TO THEIR LAST WORD.

I  will say my son’s faulty phone may have prevented future last minute changes in his life, but all in all he handled being cell-less quite well.  I half expected him to come off his Buzz with certain side affects, maybe a possible cellular detox causing a network disruption and  a communication breakdown of his opposable thumbs, therefore rendering him speechless.

There was a day or two of minor moping and staring at his thumbs trying to figure out their future should texting become obsolete while his phone is incommunicado.  It didn’t take long for him to wander over and pick up the controls to his ill forgotten Xbox collecting dust and play a childhood game or two.  I’m sure its to keep his opossable thumbs conditioned until his phones replacement battery arrives……

…….in 5 to 7 business days…..

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To Blog or not to Blog..that is the question..

I have been trying  for months to sit down and tackle my keyboard to try and coerce some nonsense out of my brain. I believe my mind has been on hiatus longer than a new hit series featured on HBO. It was as if the harder I tried to think of something to write about ,the more  the thoughts escaped and tunneled out faster than Andy Dufresne through the sewers of Shawshank. It just stinks when that happens. 

It’s like I’m held prisoner in my own head and I am facing a cell block that refuses to sing a Schwann song.  In order to get the synapses in sync, I  usually will take long walks with my dog or tackle the Elliptical at the gym. I stress the word usually. 

Lately I have found it harder and harder to get out there during the winter months, which seem to drag on longer than Holiday visits from my Mother-in Law.  The motivation to dress in layers, jump into a cold car, drive in sleet , just to arrive and  get out of a now warmed car into the cold, and enter a gym that smells like…like…… a gym;  then strip off the soaked layers and step up onto a piece of equipment that was formally occupied by a wet Wookie………..has left the building.  

As far as the long walks with my dog are concerned?  He avoids nasty weather and will withhold  potty-time longer than a camel craving an oasis.

A lot of my inspiration would attack  me at random times. Times when I didn’t have anything handy to jot the idea down. This frequently  happens while driving to the store and circling the parking lot for a space, at the same time, averting run- a -way grocery carts searching for a head on.

One time was in a bank as I stood eleventh in line during rush hour.  I found myself digging through my  bottomless pit of a purse for a pen.

A PEN I always carry in the zipper portion of a pocketbook which inevitably gets devoured by the hand bag monster lying in the abyss below the hole in fabric lining.

A PEN that sits there in clutch camo teasing the grasp of my pre -arthritic fingers ,sticking it’s partially opened tip out leaving it’s mark on my manicure to let me know it’s” there “and “unattainable at the moment”.

A PEN that refuses to surrender by the time I reach the front of the line to make my deposit; In addition, the bank employee reprimands me to sign the check and offers me a pen.  There I stand with a Pen and Teller and “No Vacancy” written all over my brain…

And as fate will have it, my thought for the day had vanished ,only to possibly resurface during another inopportune moment.  Much like that PEN of inequity did  when it decided to show itself as I returned to my car outside the bank.   Never  walk and blindly fish for keys in an open receptacle whilst trying to recapture your initial brainstorm, it leads to  a dropped hand bag adjacent to the car door causing an accessories crisis spill onto the the black top and watching a PEN that is mightier than my satchel, to roll under the car.

I got down on all fours to locate its final destination.  I tried to retrieve that slippery shut in, but  it was out of my reach and I risked bumping heads with a header pipe……and that would exhaust me…….

Gathering ideas to stimulate a blog thought is not an easy task and can prove to be hazardous depending on your surroundings at the time.  I’ve had many  afflatus attack me in the middle of a shampoo while showering.  Maybe scrubbing the scalp stimulates that a fore mentioned “cell ” block and whips a body out of the bath, dripping without a towel, sliding towards a pen spotted on the countertop……only to land on the cold tile floor in the process.

Which brought my brain to a conclusion that all ideas brought on during that scenario are………….

(wait for it)……..

SLIPPERY WHEN WET.

spread the humor.